For as long as I've been writing, the answer has been, "No." English teachers would mark up essays, saying my pronouns didn't agree. When editing copy, it's always been an important thing to catch - and something I'd catch frequently (even in my own work). It's also always been very frustrating to fix.
"His or her" sounds so incredibly awkward and clumsy, especially if you need to use it more than once in a paragraph, or even in a sentence. It trips up the flow of the language. Other alternatives, like "one," sound equally awkward and overly formal.
"They" was never satisfying to use, glaring on the page (or screen) just waiting to be circled by my teachers' red pens. But hey - I start sentences with "but," and dangle prepositions, so really, what's the harm in using 'they'?
Apparently nothing, according to Merriam-Webster Associate Editor Emily Brewster in this video about "The Awkward Case of His or Her."
Now that we've got that cleared up, can we talk about punctuation rules for quotation marks and how they make no sense?
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